Ukraine merely a pawn on the chessboard - expert

Ukraine’s newly elected President Petr Poroshenko has said in his inauguration speech he is ready to sign immediately the economic part of the agreement on Ukraine’s association with the EU. Peter Koenig, a financial pundit, former World Bank staff member and a Voice of Russia regular, talks about the big geopolitical picture, the situation in Ukraine and how a second Cold War can be averted.

What is your view on the situation in Ukraine?

The Ukrainian civil war is driven by the junta of the Kiev thugs and supported with arms and money by Washington, NATO and its European puppets. The junta continues killing its country-men and women in the eastern Donbass area. The Kiev army and death squads are accompanied by hundreds of Academi (former Blackwater) mercenaries and CIA advisors, mainly to make sure that the Kiev troops will not defect but execute their marching orders, namely fighting and killing their brothers and sisters, lest they risk being shot as traitors. To be sure, the Kiev criminal army does not take prisoners; they kill them on the spot. Not to mention the hundred Ukrainians killed by the infamous Maidan snipers – by now known to be US paid mercenaries, just a day before the illegal coup d'état of 22 February, 2014 that brought to power the current neo-Nazi government.

What is your main concern regarding the ongoing civil war?

More and more compassionate people around the world, including from hapless Europe, are becoming restless, asking impatiently: how much longer blood must flow? When will Russia intervene? A legitimate question, so it would appear from the outset. Understandably, as the context is simple: the illegal 'regime change' was sponsored, paid for and instigated by the US,CIA,NATO,EU and prepared for more than ten years at a cost of at least 5 billion dollars, as Madame Nuland boasted on several occasions. This US/EU organized coup is now turning Ukraine, a once prosperous country, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and the cradle of Russia into chaos, to become easy prey for the usual western money sharks, the IMF, European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). Behind them are the FED and Wall Street, to make sure they do as told. No mercy. For starters a US $17.5 billion IMF loan with the usual killer strings attached, à la Greece – large-scale privatization of the country's social safety net, i.e. cutting salaries pensions (in half), food and fuel subsidies, increasing taxes is rapidly becoming a nightmare for the average citizen and especially the poor. In addition, a US/NATO sledgehammer style killing machine is launched against the 'pro-Russian opposition' movement, now also called the Neo-Rossiia Defense Force (NDF). So, why is Mr. Putin not speaking up – acting up – saving fellow Russian lives? Why does he seemingly accept the sham election that brought the corrupt and corrupted multi-billionaire, chocolate magnate, Petr Poroshenko to power? – The straw in the wind, that bends to where the money flows?

Do you have an explanation?

There is a higher agenda at stake. Ukraine is a mere square on the chessboard of a large-scale and long-term geopolitical game; one that is about to cause a slow but steady tectonic power shift. The symbiotic alliance between the two giants, Russia and China, the world's largest economy, has been under preparation for the last couple of decades. It came to a sudden head thanks to Washington's bullying arrogance, thrashing around with empty threats, worthless sanctions, anti-Russia and Putin demonizing lies and propaganda. The historic signing on 21 May, 2014 of the US $400 billion equivalent gas deal between Mr. Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping had an important symbolic significance. It is a complement to the US $270 billion equivalent oil deal, signed in June 2013 between Russia's Rosneft and China. The treaties are not denominated in dollars but in the two countries' local currencies. In a larger context, the - $400 billion over 30 years, about $13 billion per year is nothing extraordinary. Russia's annual trade in hydrocarbons alone is estimated at close to one trillion dollars.

Western analysts are tempted to say that this is just a gas deal that has some economic significance but nothing else. What do you think about it?

The deal is more than a natural gas contract. It signals an alliance, a trusting and lasting partnership, beyond the Putin-Jinping generation. In parallel with the gas deal is the solidification of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic and military union founded in 1996 as the Shanghai Five – China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, expanded in 2001 under the leadership of China to also include Uzbekistan. To further solidify the Oriental pact is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Created in 1992, it comprised Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2012 Uzbekistan withdrew under pressure from the West, aiming to become associated with the EU. The current membership includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, with a rotating presidency. Iran is a possible candidate to join this alliance of otherwise all former Soviet Republics.

But that's not the only integration project in the Eurasian region.

Yes. There is a wave of integration and this wave is a response to what the US has been doing. The US' bullying is generating a blowback. More and more countries are looking for alliances in order to defend themselves from military, political and economic interference from the US. In addition, and based on the idea of the European Union, on 29 May, 2014 a day before the signing of the Russia-China gas deal, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) treaty was signed. The initial members include Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Provided the treaty is approved by the parliament of each government, the union will enter into effect on 1 January, 2015 under the umbrella of the Eurasian Commission (modeled after the European Commission). It comprises 170 million people with an expected economic output of 2.7 trillion dollars equivalent. Further candidates to join the organization are Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

There must be a bridge between the projects that unite Asian countries and the Old World. How can Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi convince Europe to fight against its current status of a US vassal?

There is an obvious synergy that can be established between Asia and Europe and we see the leaders of the emerging countries offering Europe a strategic and mutually beneficial project. It is the New Silk Road, recently announced by President Xi Jinping in Duisburg, Germany, inviting Germany to become the western-most link of the road connecting Russia, several of the former Soviet Republics and China. While the US is offering Europe unfair trade pacts and military bases, Asia is offering Europe a friendly helping hand and a project with tremendous economic benefits. Interested in joining this new alliance are also Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, all of which were present last week in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the Russian counterpart to Davos, when then New Silk Road was one of the priority topics. The New Silk Road is poised to become a huge magnet for trade, attracting in the West most if not all of the current EU members, whose currently largest trading partner is Germany and in the East it may reach as far north as Mongolia and as far east as Malaysia.

How will these offers influence European politics?

These alliances and partnerships for trade, security and cooperation are unions of mutual trust. Europe would do well to take a good look at what trust means. Europeans would perhaps discover that NATO is but a neo-colonization of Europe, with the purpose of keeping Europe in the Anglo-American sphere of influence as a buffer, so to speak, between East and West, preventing them from 'switching over' to the rapidly growing Eurasia Economic Union which already now looks more attractive and promising for the future than the economically down-trodden EU in alliance with the US, not to mention the attraction of the New Silk Road.

What competitive advantage do those alliances have if compared to NATO or the EU?

Is it so hard to notice that the Washington and NATO gang are just a bunch of lies and broken promises? It has been proven throughout the Cold War that it was based on false anti-Soviet propaganda in order to bolster the US military industrial complex, which was the lifeline of the American economy and the basis for its wasteful consumer society. It was true in the past, it remains true today. Remember the lies exacerbated by the broken promise in 1990 by James Baker, then US Secretary of State, to Soviet President Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards? This was a promise totally ignored when in 1999 NATO entered Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, and in 2004 followed Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Besides, who could trust a nation that has destabilizing counter-insurgency units deployed in 134 countries? It is the last count, according to Joachim Hagopian, former West Point army officer. The just congealed eastern-oriental union, SCO, CSTO, EEU and the New Silk Road, signify a geopolitical sea-change hard to swallow for Washington and its minion allies. They won't let go easily. Their world vision, though short-sighted, is on global hegemony, control of the world's resources, people and economies.

Do you see Ukraine as a risk generator that could affect the future of the new Eurasian alliances, the Silk Road, NATO and the European Union?

Yes, there are some risks. What if Mr. Putin would just for a moment sidestep from its long-term objective of peace and cooperation and would intervene in Ukraine to safe lives? Would he risk US-NATO retaliation, with Europe the cannon-fodder in between? What are the Kremlin's options, other than a direct involvement? An indirect engagement by arming Novorossiya to the teeth, pretty much as the US/NATO is doing with Kiev, or ride it out until the economic collapse of the dollar-linked Western world pulls with it the US/NATO military might – which might comprise of significant collateral damage, including a mounting death toll in Ukraine, or a combination of both, arming Novorossiya Defense Force and inducing the economic collapse of the West, by the introduction of a new monetary and economic system, currently being prepared by BRICS. This might at once reduce casualties in the Ukraine, as well as eliminating the chance of a new Cold War – CW II. Why? Because for a CW II to flourish, the rest of the world needs to have confidence in the dollar, since the US printing machines would run amok churning out worthless greenbacks, flooding the 'market' with debt, expected to be absorbed by central banks as reserves. But this trust is gone, by most of the world. And those who still hope to get some 'crumbs' from the emperor loot for sticking to him until the very end, become fewer and farther in between. Europe certainly is no longer solidly behind the White House with Obama's bully tactics.

Washington, London and the unofficial think-tanks like the "Bilderbergers" are certainly studying such scenarios. What countermeasures can they take in order to stop it?

There is the risk that in last desperation Washington would trigger an all destructive nuclear war. This is doubtful, though, since the banking and corporate elite of the empire, those who pull the strings on Obama's actions, are too self-centered to risk auto-destruction. It should be noted, that the so-called American elite is very un-American. People who form the elite certainly don't care about the American nation or even America itself. For them, America is just an instrument for their global domination. If they could trigger a war without destroying themselves, they would have done it. They can't and therefore they are running out of options to save themselves from collapse.In the end, and seen with a bird's eye big-picture vision, Ukraine may become the mere square on the chessboard where the arrogant and greedy queen was lost to a humble but wise peon.

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